SandroTheMaster Reviews

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010–2013)

I didn't like the original show that much, but I actually like this

[9/10 · 21 January 2012]

OK, so maybe it was just a product of its time, but I have some problems with the original show. It was corny, Freddy and Daphne had no personality, Scooby and Shaggy were just there to be comedic relief and Velma was kind of a Mary Sue that could solve anything and didn't even need the rest of the gang.

Though there were concepts I liked. Especially how it was pretty much the only show to ever try and teach skepticism to our younger. Some might argue against it, but in my view imagination and wonder is good, but you better know how to evaluate everything you hear and see.

But this show, it gets it right. I like how they kept the skeptical theme. When Zombie Island finally did real monsters (outside of a crossover) it was actually quite surprising and nice, it caught people off-guard, and it was done competently as well. Then every Scooby-Doo incarnation since had to have supernatural and science fiction (the less said about the hippie aliens, the better). And worse, they became progressively dumber... then somewhat decent.

And then this. Now I finally actually like Fred. He is a man of very specific interests... that is, a geek. He always had this jock build so it was weird he and Daphne seemed to be put in the same category of the gang as weirdos, but now this is justified. He likes mysteries, tactics and, above all, traps. He really, really likes traps. And those interests just overflow so well to everything he does as a character, it finally is an actual character trait instead of just a generic leader archetype. His obliviousness also makes a very endearing flaw.

Velma is not the magic clue-solving machine that has no other purpose or much of a personality trait over "she does't like to lose her glasses". She is this sarcastic and vulnerable teen, who is not only intelligent but clever as well. She still solves the mystery most of the time, but now it finally looks like the rest of the gang is helping in the process of mystery-solving instead of just being glorified clue-finders (or rather clue-stumblers).

Daphne is probably the most shallow, being this doe-eyed girl who is mostly following the gang so she can be with Fred, who she shares a somewhat Platonic Love for thanks to his utter obliviousness (Shaggy is more perceptive to Velma's much more subtle advances). Still, she manages to actually put some effort into it instead of just being the damsel in distress every other episode. She grows on the gang and on the spectator.

Shaggy and Scooby, while only being the comic relief, were the most developed of the original cast. What in this case only means they actually had stablished personalities, even if just of hopelessly but easily coerced (or bribed) cowards with a penchant for food and a bit short of straws in the head-box. But now they actually interact with the gang and we they react to their goofness. Pretty much everything I've ever asked the show to do.

So, overall, this show is great with superbly stablished characters. Good to know some people actually know that if you're going to resurrect an old franchise instead of creating something new, the least you can do is actually improve on it instead of just doing the same thing over or just pointlessly changing it to the point it is unclear why not just creating something new in the first place. 9 of 10.

Battle Los Angeles (2011)

Wimpest aliens of Hollywood history defeated by a single marine squad

[4/10 · 21 March 2011]

The main problem with this alien invasion movie is that it utterly destroys the cliché of the alien undeniable superiority... except that too much and not really.

The aliens are ruthless and extremely efficient and powerful. As long as they are off-screen. Whenever they are on-screen, however, they are completely ineffective at defeating a single squad of COMPLETELY GREEN marines.

During the first encounters with the aliens they seem perfectly intangible. Both ways. The marines never manage to graze them but the aliens never really hit the marines either. They get the drop with their heavy and clunky armor, ambushing, and manages to miss their missiles every single time. The first time a single alien surprises a single marine one-on-one, even firing first and having the element of surprise, manages to lose to the panickiest and worst marine of the squadron that managed to separate from the others.

Then it rises again after being supposedly dead and take the drop on the squad leader and two more guys that came looking for the lost marine, firing first again... and still manages to not even nick anyone.

Actually, the only person the aliens manage to kill with their main weapon is a civilian that went into the open. Everyone else either die in a heroic sacrifice or to the most ineffective missiles ever portrayed in film. So... not even their armor seems to be an actual disadvantage. Mind that they do hit the marines a bunch of time, but their Kevlar seems to be more than enough of protection to save them from their supposedly superior weapons. While the metal that protects the aliens is probably aluminum considering their effectiveness.

Initially the army also believes that it has an advantage because the aliens are shown to not have an air force at first. This changes as a rescue chopper that shows up to take the wounded (IE, the two guys that the alien foot troops managed to NOT KILL) is blown up by the first of the aliens' aircraft. Then we find out that those, unlike the foot soldiers, are unmanned drones. From this point we keep hearing how the aliens got the air superiority and managed to defeat the whole of the US air force... yeah right.

Whenever they are on-screen they are completely ineffective except for that chopper they manage to get the drop on. We never see an US aircraft fall but we get to see one of the drones drop. Another one falls for the most obvious trick in the book by taking a bait to get close enough to a gas station to be blown up instead of just shooting at the bait. The way we keep seeing those drones just shooting left and right for "shitz n' giggles" you'd think they'd shoot first and check later, they're not that careful in any other part of the film. Also, they are sloooooooooooooow... You really wonder the whole movie how those lumbering things would outmaneuver and outfight even the oldest jet fighters.

A little after we get to see a tank outclassing a whole unit of the alien foot soldiers until they bring in their own tank. I literally giggled when I saw that thing and the first thought that crossed my mind was "Are you serious?" The second was "How did the human-made tank manage to not blow it away from a hundred meters?" Their tank is pathetic, ineffective and under-performing in EVERY SINGLE AREA. It's a true testament to their technological expertise when their tank is: a) vulnerable to light firearms, b) leaves the driver vulnerable in the open himself, c) has a top speed slower than a man walking on foot, d) has only one weapon (a slow-rearming missile salvo), e) has an estimated effective range for its missile salvo of twenty meters (the only range we ever see it fire from), f) can only fire in front of it and g) has the worst possible fire-mode for a missile salvo, that is, it shoots a dozen unlocked missiles in a spiral in a straight line instead of spreading them.

Heck, as if to drive the point home at how much of stupid morons the foot-soldiers are at a later scene we have the veteran marine leave a hand grenade down a sewer hatch and one of the foot soldiers reach down, take the grenade... and stare at it until it explodes.

The worst part is yet to come though. The aliens, off course, have a mothership. It is truly incredible how precisely designed those motherships are. They are the exact perfect size. They are just large enough to be a HUGE TARGET impossible to miss even from orbit but small enough to not be imposing or a sturdy juggernaut. Scientists must have worked day and night to reach this exact ratio of size. Its the first mothership ever in an alien invasion film where a tactical nuke would be overkill and still they'd not even need to aim. They only take a couple of small ballistic missiles to completely take it down.

The best part is that the mothership doesn't even have any degree of protection. No shields, no auto-repair, no weapons, no armor, no electronic screening, no EMP, no fire solutions, no flak, no anti-missile lasers, no NOTHING. The best it can do is send one of its drones to stand in the way of a missile. Really, you'd think such a vulnerable and essential part of their force would at least be left in orbit where we could only reach it with missiles, the only thing to which they have some degree of limited protection.

The movie is only worthy for the visuals, and even then only a little. The characters are so generic and forgettable they're not even worth mentioning and the plot is too stupid and unbelievable to be entertaining.

Dragonball Evolution (2009)

This movie made me fall asleep two times, the third time I realized in horror why

[1/10 · 22 July 2010]

Just to clarify: I've NEVER slept on a movie. Not even through some really bad drivel. Not even the unmistakeably awful. Not even through Titanic.

But yes, the first time I saw this movie I fell asleep 20 minutes in and lost the whole showing. I figured it was because I was tired and had just spent a few too many hours awake, so I tried it again even though the little I could remember of watching in the multiplex seemed more like part of my nightmares.

The second time I went to the cinema again (good lord I can't believed I paid this much to the people involved) and made sure to be wholly awaken to see the movie all the way through. 20 minutes in I realized (to my horror) that no, it wasn't a nightmare. What little I remembered of the movie really was what the filmmakers decided to commit to screen. Half hour in I was so bored I fell asleep again.

Then now I have the DVD rental (it came free with other purchases, I still feel ripped-off) and promised myself I'd watch all the way through, so I drank nearly half liter of coffee and went on with it. By the time Goku fights Piccolo for the first time I realized no promise was worth it and just popped the damn thing out to watch something else.

I'm not a fan of the Anime or Manga, so I don't feel exactly betrayed (ripped-off, conned and used, yes, but not betrayed), especially because I've always thought the story itself would never translate well at any degree into the big screen. But the Anime itself (at least the first series) had interesting fights and ideas. The fights in this one are easily the worst thing in the entire movie.

The world feels like it is populated solely by the protagonists, and all interactions between characters don't only feel forced and contrived, but extremely unnatural to a point that not even blatantly reading the script and actively trying to act badly would accomplish. They must've made many, many shots in order to get a take horrid enough to put in the movie, because scenes that bad can't possibly be the product of a first try. The scene where Chichi discovers that Goku can manipulate Ki is unbelievably bad, but not in a funny way. It's not "so bad it is good", it goes beyond "so bad it is horrible". The story is poorly executed, the main protagonist is an unlikable blank sheet of a teen and by halfway through I wished so much that Piccolo was successful in his plan and blew up that stupid world that I just couldn't bear to know the movie would have a happy ending, and as such I didn't want to expose myself to it.

Hollywood, you may have raised the bar showing that it can be done with Speed Racer, but Dragon Ball have completely stripped any doubts that Speed Racer was just a gigantic fluke way beyond your capabilities.

(Gods, I still can't believe I've slept through a movie, or that what I saw in the screen wasn't a nightmare)

The Tale of Despereaux (2008)

Good enough to be enjoyed, but your kids will disagree

[7/10 · 6 February 2009]

Slight spoilers about the first 10 minutes ahead.

All in all, the movie is good. If only the beautiful art was matched by the clustered story...

What I noticed is, this movie is way too dark for kids under, say, 10. It is very dark and the moral lessons are a bit too strong for the comfort of 5 years old (of whom at least half a dozen were crying hard in the theater I went by the middle of the movie). Also, there's a character who gets way too much attention just so you don't think of her as evil after a pretty grim act from her, so the movie can be villain-free (alright, there IS one villain, but by the end the villains feels much unnecessary, really). Ultimately, at least they end up actually using the apparently random wacky character instead of just leaving it around to be bizarre (a salad genie, though? Really?), like in, say, Dreamworks animations.

Interesting enough, what many consider to be the problem of the movie is the aspect that pleased me the most. In that the movie has no pace. By that I mean, the story just goes, and in its grimmest moments the pace is about the same as its happiest ones. The movie kicks off with an entire kingdom going to a dark season because soup (the kingdom's favorite, you see) is banned, along with rats (not as liked, no), because the king is glooming over the death of his queen, just because a single visiting rat wanted to smell better the soup served to the royals. Yeah... And it all just happens. Before you know it, the queen is dead. During a comic chase scene between the castle guards and said rat. And at least for me, that's awesome! Because the air won't suddenly become heavier just because something grim is about to happen, nor the other way around. Unfortunately, it seems accidental, since the air do get dark, but only after the characters realizing the death of the queen, not before it is about to happen so the audience knows something bad is about to happen, so the death actually comes as a shock (which, again, is terrible on the youngsters...).

This extends until the end, with the epilogue not looking like an epilogue at all, you feel like the story could just go on if wasn't for the fact that it was, in fact, over.

Also, the movie is unable to make strong scenes. When a character is angry, or sad, or something else, the scenes are just there for you to watch. (Well... not entirely true. The scenes of the king playing his lute alone in a cold gray room are pretty strong, but that's about it).

Pre-teens might enjoy the movie more, even tough they'll probably be expecting more action and jokes from it, but an adult can watch it without expecting it to be a waste of time.

WALL·E (2008)

A Piece of Art That Proves Pixar Has Found Its Way Again

[9/10 · 2 July 2008]

There will be some Minor Spoilers ahead.

Don't get me wrong. I have a personal oath to NEVER give a 10 to a movie, so bear with me.

After a few meh... movies, Pixar seems to have found its own way with Ratatouille and now Wall-E. Especially Wall-E. It has put in its company head that it can't actually beat Dreamworks Animations in pure humor, so it has now embarked in a new direction and went back to try and make animation an art. And we should all be thankful for it.

Hell, if you had any doubts Wall-E was supposed to be a work of art, the Epilogue shown in the start of the credits at the end should clear any doubts, as it is shown through all art styles through history, from pre-history art to modern art. Finally, after that, when the credits are actually rolling up, there's a tribute to gaming as robot characters are shown pixelated like old time games doing small chores.

About the movie, I was intrigued from the start when I heard it would be about a little robot that was left on earth to clean it as mankind took off to space. That's a very original premise that caught my mind so I waited on it.

As it turns out, mankind had left Earth and, in it, an army of Wall-Es to clean it, or Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-class. About 700 years later, only one Wall-E unit is left surviving from savaging parts from unresponsive Wall-Es scrap. He carries on with his duty of cleaning the planet, but the centuries of interaction with the ghost of mankind and apparently co-existing with roaches made him develop some form of personality as it collects everything it finds interesting.

The movie takes on from that because that's when another robot, Eve, gets to earth with unknown purpose. The movie is very adamant about how its possible for an AI to develop personality given time and exposition to the right kind of stuff, like another "rogue AI". At some point of the movie other robots with personality are shown, but they're taken as broken and are in a repair bay. Eve exposition to Wall-E gives her, too, some hint of personality that she eventually develops. Wall-E falls in love with Eve thanks to a mixture of various factors, one important being old video footage Wall-E used to watch, where there are men dancing with hats and a final scene where a man is singing with a woman and they hold hands. After Eve showing up Wall-E tries to mimic the holding hands scene various times unsuccessful, mostly because of Eve's aggressivity and curiosity that made her unaware of Wall-e's intention. She is quite trigger-happy with her plasma cannon mounted in her arm, and almost annihilate Wall-E a few times during their first encounters.

There's also eventually a human component. Humans are shown as fat bloats costumed to have robots doing everything to them and only knowing the universe around them from a visual hologram that's mounted in front of their heads, from which they talk to each other and see stuff. Wall-E bumps into a few of those and turns off the hologram, making them "awake" once again to the world around then. So Wall-E isn't only giving personality to other robots, but to humans as well. Even so, save from one human in particular, you usually wish you were watching the robots rather than them whenever they show up. Not that they're poorly characterized, but the robots are so appealing you don't want to waste a second watching anything but.

There's also a small cleaning robot Wall-E gives personality by the fact he was completely dirty and the robot obsessed in cleaning him. So he dared to move away from his pre-determined path so he can clear up Wall-E's track. Also, it is interesting that the movie has no actual villains... well, maybe save from the humans of the past who turned the planet into a giant trash can (and that's us). The humans just forgot about earth and the AIs getting in the way are only following their prime directives from 700 years ago. Finally, Eve is unbelievably cute when she's mad.

Damn, this movie even made me shed some tears in a particular scene, and that's a hell of an accomplishment I assure you reader. That's from a man that only raised an eyebrow at Aeris Death in FF VII and who movies get at most a slight chuckle at their most dramatic deaths.